I would have expected this reunion to be played out extremely well, by the ‘King of Romance’ or whatever it is that they call Sparks these days. Moreover, there was a scene in the book, where Allie returns to Noah, after supposedly having walked out on him forever. Unfortunately, this was a consistent theme in the book – the constant telling and not showing, and this made it a tedious read for me. That is not CHEMISTRY, that is a SUMMARY. Sparks relies on TELLING us (frequently!) how his characters burn for each other. There’s a reason why love stories usually end with a wedding, you know!Īlso, there is not much chemistry between the two lead characters. Instead, right at the point where a typical climax would take place, the whole story skips almost half a century, and starts poking the reader really hard with the crying stick, which admittedly, was pretty effective, but left me feeling cheated out of a really great climax. If the book had ended at the point where the lovers reunite, it would have been a really great short story. To be fair, I thought the first part of the book was pretty good. Now, if we consider my positive experiences with the movies based on his books, and all the hype around the author, this book has been a relative letdown. What follows next, is a poignant tale about two people who try to recapture the love that they once shared, in-spite of the passage of time and the altered circumstances.
The plot of this book is based on two teenagers from opposite sides of the tracks, who meet and fall in love over summer break, but due to certain unfavorable situations, get separated once the summer is over. So… I stuck to my mantra (which I use while starting with an author new to me) – ‘When in doubt, pick the debut’, which then brings me to this review. However, I was unsure about where to start with this author, as there is so much hype surrounding several of his books, and I did not want to read the ones that I had seen on screen. I felt like if the movies were this good, the books must be really REALLY great. Which is what made me very curious about his books. This book was my very first exposure to Nicholas Sparks’s writing, although I had seen a couple of movies that were based on his books, and had loved them both ( Safe Haven & The Best of Me).
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